“O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.”
ROMEO AND JULIET.
“Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard,
And weigh thee down.”
KING RICHARD III.
ASTR. I will no longer hesitate to grant that the dream occurs in the
moment of departing or returning consciousness. Still, are you not
_reversing_ the order of these phenomena? may not the excitement of
vague ideas in the mind be, itself, the cause of waking, and not the
consequence of slumber, or half-sleep?
EV. I believe not, except the sensibility of the body be influenced by
touch, or sound, or by oppressive congestions of blood in the brain,
causing that state of disturbance which reduces sound sleep to slumber;
as in the instance of “Night-mare,” which is to the mind what sensation
is to the body, restoring it to a state of _half-consciousness_,
essential to that sort of dreaming, in which we make a painful effort to
relieve, and at last awake.
CAST. Mara, by my fay! the night-spectre of Scandinavia; that evil
spirit of the Runic theology, who weighed upon the bosom, and bereaved
her victims of speech and motion: that oppressive dream, therefore,
termed _Hag-ridden_, or, in the Anglo-Saxon, _Elf-siderme_. Is it not
she, of whom it is written,—
“We seem to run, and destitute of force,
Our sinking limbs forsake us in the course.
In vain we heave for breath, in vain we cry;
The nerves unbraced, their usual strength deny,
And on the tongue the faltering accents die.”
EV. A very faithful picture.
Sound sleep will often be broken by pain or uneasiness occurring in a
particular part of the body; the dream will then often bear an
instructive reference to the seat and nature of such pain. If cramp has
attacked any of the limbs, or the head has been long confined back, the
dream may be enlivened by some analogous tortures in the dungeon of the
Inquisition; and it is curious, that a waking wish for some relief from
unpleasant sensations will be _re_-excited in the dream,—a _dreamy
fulfilment_. Captain Back, during one of the Arctic expeditions, when
nearly in a state of starvation, often dreamed of indulging in _a
delicious repast_. And Professor Stewart thus writes,—“I have been told
by a friend, that, having occasion to apply a bottle of hot water to his
feet, he dreamed that he was making a journey to the top of Mount Ætna,
and that he found the heat of the ground insupportable. Another, having
a blister applied to the head, dreamed that he was _scalped_ by a party
of Indians.”
If on these occasions we are warm in bed, our dreams will be often
pleasing, and the scenes in the tropics; if _cold_, or chilly, the
reverse, and we shall believe ourselves in Zembla.
Holcroft had been musing on the probabilities of life and death, and one
night went in pain to bed. He dreamed his body was severed above his
hips, and again joined in a surprising manner. He was astonished to
think he was alive, and afraid of being struck, lest the parts should be
dissevered.
Tempests heard in a slumber will be often associated with a dream of
shipwreck; and some persons will dream of their having given pain to, or
injured, others: they wake, and find some close analogy to _their own_
sensations.
It is recorded that Cornelius Rufus dreamed that he was blind, and _so_
indeed _he awoke_.
In other cases, we have the _double touch_, as it is termed; dreams of
forcible detention occur, and the sleeper has found that he had with one
hand tightly grasped the other. If this hand had been _moved in sleep_
unconsciously, the dream, no doubt, would have been essentially changed.
And thus we have all the phenomena realised, which Shakspere has
referred to in the visitations of his incorrigible Mab.
Elliston was always awaked by nightmare when sleeping in a strange bed.
As in some persons, by submitting the body to certain impressions during
sleep, associated dreams may be produced at pleasure; so if the body or
legs hang over the side of a bed, we may instantly dream of falling from
a precipice: and it is curious that, under these illusions, we awake
when we are past hope and our despair is at its height: in falling, at
the moment we are about to be dashed to atoms; and, in drowning, when
the last bubbles are gurgling in the throat.
When we read in the Bodleian, Astrophel, I will point you to other
curious experiments of this sort, by M. de Buzareingries.
Sounds also may be partly associated with the dream at waking, and with
reality, when awake. Under this illusive impression, even murder has
been _innocently_ committed, on one, who waked, and stabbed his brother
at the moment he was _dreaming_ of assassins.
CAST. And so may be explained, I suppose, this funny anecdote. A young
lover was drooping into a day-dream, while sitting with his brothers and
sisters, and his thought had turned on the cruelty of his mistress. He
was for a moment dreaming of her, when pussy, stretching her paws,
scratched his leg with a claw: there was an instant association, I
presume, of the wound with the lady’s cruelty, for he started and
exclaimed, “Oh Arabella, don’t!”
EV. Hippocrates quaintly alludes to the dreaming about seas and lakes as
an indication of _hydrothorax_; and to others, as symptomatic of
_effusion on the brain_: and it has been asserted, that gloomy dreams in
fevers indicate danger. But all this is hypothesis; indeed, the
delirious dreams of fever are often bright and cheerful.
The “Opium-Eater” has a strange fancy regarding his dreams of “silvery
expanses of water;” “these haunted me so much, that I feared that some
dropsical state or tendency of the brain, might thus be making itself
_objective_, and the sentient organ project itself as its own object.” I
hope you understand this, Astrophel—I do not.
In the morbid condition of _hypochondriasis_, which is a sort of
permanent _daymare_, similar fancies are excited. Esquirol’s patient at
Notre Dame thought the pope held council in her belly;—her intestines
were found _closely adherent_ together. Another monomaniac thought the
devil had stretched a cord across her stomach;—her heart was _adherent
to its bag_. Another believed that her body was stolen by the
devil;—she was in reality paralytic, and _insensible_ to blows or
pricking.
To explain some of these illusions, Jason Pratensis very gravely
asserts, that “the devil being a slender incomprehensible spirit, can
easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and, cunningly
couched in our bowels, terrify our souls with fearful dreams.”
I may add that we see, in some, a delirious _transmigration of
sensation_. Parkinson relates these cases. One referred his own
sensation to others, telling his nurse that his visitors were hungry,
while his own voracity plainly indicated that the _hunger was in
himself_. Another, in a fit of intoxication, insisted on undressing all
his family, as they were drunk, and could not do it themselves.
Now we certainly move ourselves unconsciously in our sleep as a relief
from painful positions. If, however, these uneasy sensations are
increased from stagnant blood about the heart and lungs, the oppression
is extreme, and _loads_ the moving powers; producing a transient agony
and an intense effort. If this were unsuccessful on the limbs and
speech, the result would be often destructive.
The night-mare dreamers are usually lethargic, and their ideas are often
wild and visionary.
Polidori, the author of the “Vampire,” was a prey to night-mare; he died
with a laudanum bottle in his bed. And Coleridge might have thus left a
sad and pointed moral; blazoning his wretched suicide to that world,
which unconsciously has pored with a thrill of admiration over those
fruits of his delinquency, the romantic and unearthly stories of
Christabel and the Ancient Mariner.
The grand feature of night-mare, then, is _impediment_: but how can I
record all its varieties of miserable struggles; of attacks and
manglings from wild monsters: of the rolling of mountains on the heart:
or the unhallowed embraces of a witch?
The young lady who reads mythology, will fancy herself a syrinx, and
struggle to escape from the amorous clutches of Pan. If we have been
thinking of Chamouni and her giant peaks of snow, we may be overwhelmed
in our sleep by the fall of an avalanche; or we may be dashed off a
precipice, and feel ourselves falling into interminable space without a
hope of resting.
A lady whom I know, and who is a frequent subject of night-mare, is very
uniform in this dreamy occupation. She is shaken to and fro in her bed
by fiends, and the process seems to her to occupy considerable time. And
there are many who are tortured by the feeling that they are buried
alive, and attempt to cry out, and beat against their coffin-lid in
vain. Aurelian writes, that the epidemics in Rome were premonished by
_incubus_.
These, and thousands of a similar kind, might be cited; but a vivid
imagination, with a hint or two, will readily create them at its
pleasure.
“A battalion of French soldiers, during the toils and dangers of a
campaign, were marching on a certain point on a most oppressive day, and
at double the usual speed; their strength was eight hundred men, all
hardy, seasoned, and courageous; careless of danger, despising the
devil, and little occupied with the thoughts of ghosts and
phantasmagoria. On the night of the occurrence in question, the
battalion was forced to occupy a narrow and low building at Tropœa,
barely calculated to accommodate three hundred persons. Nevertheless,
they slept; but, at midnight, one and all were roused by frightful
screams issuing from all quarters of the house; and to the eyes of the
astonished and affrighted soldiers appeared the vision of a huge dog,
which bounded in through the window, and rushed with extraordinary
heaviness and speed over the breasts of the spectators. The soldiers
quitted the building in terror. Next night, by the solicitations of the
surgeon and _chef-de-bataillon_, who accompanied them, they again
resumed their previous quarters. ‘We saw,’ says the narrator, ‘that they
_slept_. We watched the arrival of the hour of the preceding panic, and
midnight had scarcely struck when the veteran soldiers, for the second
time, started to their feet. Again they had heard the supernatural
voices, again the visionary hound had bestrode them to suffocation. The
_chef-de-bataillon_ and myself heard or saw nothing of these events.’”
The superstitious thought this spectre to be the devil; but the heat and
_carbonic acid gas_ were, I believe, enough for the excitement of the
phantasm and the feeling.
There can scarcely be imagined a more terrific feeling than this sense
of extreme danger, or difficulty, this intense impediment, without a
power to avert it. The constant labour of Sisyphus, with his
rolling-down stone, and the punishment of Tantalus, would yield in
severity to the agony of night-mare, but for its _transient_ existence.
It seems to me, that this want of balance between will and power
influences human nature so much, that life itself may be termed one long
and painful _incubus_. The actions we perform seldom reach the
perfection which the will desires. Hence arises that constant
dissatisfaction, which even the close approach to perfection of some of
the most accomplished professors of art and science cannot avert.
We must confess, with Socrates, that the extent of our knowledge is
indeed but a conviction of our ignorance. The metaphor of Sir Isaac
Newton, on the insignificance of his own scientific attainments, is well
known. Sir Joshua Reynolds so highly appreciated perfection in his art,
that he was ever discontented with his own paintings; and frequently, as
I have heard, by repeated touches, destroyed the effect of a picture,
which had been in its early stages beautiful. And Dr. Johnson, after
astonishing the world with his perfect specimen of lexicographical
composition, confessed that he “had not satisfied his own expectations.”
May I add to these the frequent _discontent_ of the unrivalled Paganini?
IDA. The desire of the mind is, indeed, unlimited; and when this is
intense, it wishes to appropriate to itself all which it can
_comprehend_. But disappointment _must_ ensue; for all wish to be the
whole, when they form but a part. Thus will ever be proved the futility
of _worldly_ ambition,—it is never satisfied. But the desires of
religion are not a phantom, or an incubus. True devotion, which aspires
to heaven, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, will never fail.
Its fervent hopes and devout prayers, we believe, will be blessed by
their accomplishment.
CAST. Then the visitations of the incomparable Mab are nought but the
infliction of the night-mare? Gentle Master Evelyn, how should I be
aweary of your philosophy, but that I am half won over to believe it
true? In good faith,
“The Gordian knot of it you do unloose
Familiar as your garter.”
EV. Then, I pray you, let me counsel you not to court such visits, dear
Castaly. There is some peril in the touch both of Mab and Mara; for
although rare and transient cases of night-mare excite no alarm, yet its
repetition, in a severe form, is not to be slighted. It sometimes has
been the forerunner of _epilepsy_; its immediate cause being obstruction
to the course of the blood by which the brain especially is surcharged,
and the action of the lungs and heart impeded, as we prove by the
extreme labour of breathing at the time we awake.
I believe that there is usually a fulness of blood, also, in the vessels
of the spinal marrow; as, although nightmare may occur in the _sitting_,
it is far more frequent in the _recumbent_ position. Thus the marrow is
oppressed, and there is then no force transmitted by the nerves to put
the muscles into action.
Distention of the stomach should be prevented, as the _diaphragm_ is
thus pushed up against the lungs, and the gas is accumulated in the
cavity. All these conditions often occur in our waking moods, but _then_
our judgment tells us how to relieve them speedily; whereas, _in sleep_,
the load accumulates. All indigestible substances, therefore, should be
avoided, as nuts, cucumbers, shell-fish, &c.
Early and light suppers we advise to those whom Madame Mara so
unmercifully overlies. A mattress should be our couch, and we should
endeavour to compose ourselves _on one side_, having, previous to our
rest, taken _gentle exercise_.